The Cause of Death (33 page)

Then suddenly, they were outside, in the night and the dark, with the wind whipping by them, and the sharp cold air stinging their skin. The main lights were out, but more emergency lighting was powered up outside, providing just enough illumination to guide them well clear of the Keep.

Smoke and flame billowed out of the windows of one of the Keep's upper stories, throwing an angry yellow-red light on the crowd below. The steady green emergency lighting and the flickering, leaping reds and oranges of the fire seemed to do battle with each other as one, then the other colored the crowd, the landscape, the night.

The massive building was made to resemble a large outcropping of rock, or perhaps a small hill, and the belching fire and gouts of smoke looked like the eruption of a miniature volcano. The fire itself was making noise, but not anywhere near as much as the alarms that still shrieked, or the cries and moans of the crowd. Even with Hannah's far-less-than-perfect grasp of Reqwar Pavlat, she understood what the Pavlat in the shocked and stunned crowd were saying to each other.

Jamie heard it too, and turned to look at her, shouting the news she already knew in her ear. "That's the Thelm's private study up there," he told her. "And the Thelm hasn't been seen since the alarm."

And he won't be, either
, Hannah thought, a sick certainty twisting her stomach into knots. One look into Jamie's eyes told her that he had reached the same conclusion she had.

But guesses and assumptions would do them no good. Her agent's reflex for isolating the facts in a crisis situation took over. Hannah noted the time, estimated how long it had been since the alarm, noted the weather, the wind direction, anything that was measurable.

She scanned the crowd, noting who was there, who was not. She spotted Zahida ten or twenty meters off, standing by herself, wrapped in her sleeping blanket, her face dull with shock. And there, Marta and a little girl, a human girl who had to be Moira. Moira was in tears and shock, clinging to her mother. A man in street clothes, but in stocking feet, knelt to pick her up and hold her tight. Then Hannah blinked and forced herself to think. This was a Pavlat world. There
were
no human men here--or precious few. Hannah realized with a start that the man was Georg Hertzmann, wearing the clothes she had last seen him in. The darkness and the weird shifting light had made him all but unrecognizable.

Suddenly, three flying machines, moving in formation, dropped out of the sky and stopped dead in midair, right at the level of the fire. Spotlights came on from somewhere on the ground, and aimed themselves at the fliers. They looked like nothing so much as giant flying Easter eggs lying on their sides, painted in patterns of clashing iridescent green and fluorescent orange.

Suddenly, hatches opened on the forward ends of each flying egg, and jets of white smoke or gas blasted at the flames. Cold gaseous carbon dioxide, at a guess, serving both to cut off the air supply to the fire, and to cool off whatever was burning enough to keep it from reigniting once the CO
₂
dispersed. Wherever the jets of white vapor struck, the flames shrank back like a living thing. The flames came back when the vapor dissipated, but not as bright, not as hot, not as big, not as strong.

The flying eggs moved about to stand on all sides of the burning tower, then drove in toward the fire, blasting away with their gas jets, driving the fire back, forcing it down. Other nozzles appeared from other hatches, and fired bright yellow foam in short precise shots into the flames, slapping down the surviving stands of fire.

One of the eggs nosed its way into one of the shattered windows, deliberately plowing its way through, and the sound of broken glass and protesting metal was plain to hear. It vanished into the interior, the glow of unseen flames still visible. A huge cloud of vapor erupted out of the ruined windows, then another, and another--and a sudden belch of dark black smoke erupted from the interior as the last of the fire was quenched.

The eggs stayed where they were, occasionally firing another shot of yellow foam whenever the flames threatened to flare up, but the fire was out. The sirens stopped sounding, the normal outdoor lighting came on, and the emergency lights shut off. The roar of the crowd had died away with the roar of the flames, and all that could be heard were muttering whispers, a few quiet oddly human sobbing sounds, and occasional low, keening cries made all the more heartrending because they were so alien.

The show was over. Hannah felt an absolutely overwhelming urge to get up there, to what she was assuming was a crime scene, immediately. She had to get there
now
,
this moment
, before the fire authorities could tramp over things, before evidence damaged in the fire could crumble and collapse into nothing.
Before two or three different competing sets of cops can start to argue out who has jurisdiction, who they're working for, and what that person will want found. Before they have a chance to misunderstand their orders correctly
.

She realized that she had never let go of her grip on Jamie's arm. He took her by the hand and shouted in her ear again. "We're wearing the Thelm's Hand Pendants. Maybe those will be enough to get us up there." Good to know that her partner was thinking the same way she was.

"Let's go," she said--but there was another hand, neither human nor Pavlat, tugging at her other arm.

She pulled back, spun about--and was astonished to find herself nose-to-snout with Brox 231. "You do not trust me," he said without any preamble.

"No," said Hannah, after she had recovered from her surprise. "We have no reason to do so."

"And I have no reason to trust you," he said. "We back different sides, have opposite goals. But what has just happened puts this planet on the edge of chaos and civil war. That serves no one at all." Brox reached out his arms to encompass the three of them. "But even if we cannot trust each other--perhaps all of us together can trust--all of us together."

"A joint investigation?" Hannah asked.

"What about the local cops?" Jamie demanded.

"There barely are any, and it will take them hours, if not longer, to get organized." Brox looked from one of them to the other. "I have been here much longer than you. I can tell you there is not a hope in the universe of the local police authorities dealing with the crime scene properly. We must do it ourselves."

"So you assume it is a crime scene," said Hannah.

Brox flicked his head back dismissively. "I am not a fool. This was no accident--though the history of this world is written in convenient accidents and botched or suppressed investigations. I tell you it will cease to be a crime scene--or at least a crime scene of any use, if it is not secured
now
, by all of us."

Brox looked at both of them, and spoke further. "The High Thelek does not know I am here," he said. "And he would certainly object if he did. I do not even know if he is yet aware of what has happened--though he wouldn't have to do more than look out his window to find out. Once he
does
find out, he will start scheming about ways to take advantage of events. I tell you plainly that the ultimate goal of my government is to install him as Thelm, then to use our relationship with him to establish a major presence on Reqwar. And I will tell you plainly that the Thelek's instinct for plots and schemes will serve him very badly indeed in these circumstances." He gestured up at the tower. "Whatever is up there must be protected, recorded, witnessed, preserved. If it is not, and if what I fear has happened--if what we
all
fear has happened--then murk and doubt and uncertainty and suspicion will poison everything. The air will be thick with conspiracy theories, and with genuine conspiracies.

"The troubles we have seen so far will be as nothing. This world will slide into civil war, and that war will bring on a final collapse. You have not been on this world long--but surely you have been here long enough to know that what I say is true. And now only truth, facts, evidence, proof, certainty can save this world from that fate. Please. Let us do this together, for everyone's sake."

Hannah hesitated. This was way beyond her pay grade, her level of authority. She wasn't even sure she knew who, if anyone, in UniGov had the power to authorize a joint investigation with an agent of a hostile xeno agency on a third-species planet that had no diplomatic relationship of any kind with humanity. But that was what being a BSI Senior Special Agent was all about. She caught the eager hunter's look in Jamie's eye and saw him give the slightest of nods. That was enough for her. "All right," she said. "We do the crime scene together."

"You'll need me," said another voice from behind her. Hannah turned and saw Zahida there. "I know the language, know the rules, know some of the officials--"

"No," said Jamie. "No, Lady Zahida," he said, using her title for the first time that Hannah had ever heard. "You must not come. For the safety and security of all--including yourself--you must not get near that chamber."

Zahida opened her mouth to protest--but then the full import of what Jamie was implying hit her, full force.

That's right, Zahida. You're a suspect. A prime suspect. We can't risk it being you who 'accidentally' muddles the evidence
. But there could be no harm in helping her save face. "Jamie's thinking like an investigator, Zahida," she said, deliberately
not
using her title. "There's no physical evidence of your being up there during the crime, because you weren't there."
Or at least we'll go with that assumption for purposes of this conversation
. "We couldn't answer for the consequences if you inadvertently left misleading physical evidence behind by going there now."

Zahida's eyes widened as her ears contracted back against the sides of her head. "Oh," she said. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Do it another way," said Jamie. "A way that helps us and protects you. Find us a cop. A local, honest cop. One from the right jurisdiction. Someone junior enough to have some initiative, and senior enough to give orders and have them obeyed."

"And someone who might actually be interested in having the case solved," Brox said drily. "That by itself will limit the field quite a bit."

Zahida's eyes brightened. "I know just the one," she said. "And he ought to be here, now."

"Find him," Brox said, and stabbed a finger toward the ruined top of the Keep, where tendrils of smoke were still eddying out into night sky. "And tell him to take us--there."

TWENTY
CRIME SCENE

The night was turning cold, and the wind was picking up again. The area around the Keep was lit up nearly as bright as day, and the roiling clouds overhead were dimly visible from the ground. Huge weird shadows would loom up on the Keep whenever someone walked in front of a powerlight. Now and then a whiff of smoke, or steam, or burned wood, or some stranger smell born of fire, would waft past.

The crowd was thickening up, and edging in toward the Keep. Unitmaster Laloyk Darsteel told one of his officers to have the barriers pushed back again, then turned back to the fire officer, struggling to keep his temper. The fool was behaving as if this was some brush fire out in the hill country, not a possible assassination.

"The fire is out," said Darsteel, "and we need access to the room where it started, and need it
now
. You've done splendid work, but you must move that fire floater out of the interior at once, so we can have room to work.
And before it can smash the evidence to kindling or dissolve it with firefoam residue
, he thought. But there was no need to rile the fire officer up. "You can keep your fire floaters on watch outside the Keep. If there is a flare-up, they'll be close enough to handle it."

The officer hesitated, then nodded. "Very well."

"Good!" Darsteel decided to press his luck, so long as the man was agreeing. "And I want you to hang some tarping over the broken windows. If a storm brews up, we don't want the wind and rain in there."

"It will be done," said the fire officer, saluting smartly.

Darsteel had other reasons for wanting the fire floater out and the tarps in place. The fire floater that had nosed into the Keep had a remote camera. So far, the only ones to have seen the view it provided were the fire officer--who was, fortunately, a person of no imagination whatsoever--and Darsteel himself, who had plenty of imagination. He had no desire to let anyone else see the grisly scene just yet. With the floater out of the interior, and the tarps shielding the view from anyone else who tried to get a flying camera up there, the odds on keeping things more or less private, at least for a little while, were much improved.

Cameras. For a fleeting moment, Darsteel indulged himself in the wish that the Thelm had taken the High Thelek's example in one way, at least. The High Thelek's home was reputed to be a forest of cameras and snooping devices, inside and out. If the Keep had been like that, it would have made the investigation vastly easier. It might even have made the crime impossible to commit.